Eye on Psych

Pages

Sunday, June 28, 2015

A recent research paper attempts to answer the question: “Are psychopaths and heroes twigs off the same branch?” Psychopathy is usually thought of as one of the most malevolent manifestations of a disturbed personality structure as it is associated with selfishness, callousness, and lack of concern for others. In spite of this, in recent times people have begun to look for a positive face to psychopathy, or
at the very least, to some of its component traits. The evidence for
this is rather mixed, but there does seem to be a connection of sorts between
at least some traits and behavior loosely associated with psychopathy and
heroic actions that help others. Bold, fearless traits are associated with
heroic behavior, but callous traits such as meanness and coldness are not. More
puzzling is that people with a history of antisocial behavior are more likely
to engage in heroic acts to help others.

Some heroes have a distinctly dark side

Psychopathy is composed of a
cluster of several different component traits that interact with each other to
produce a disturbing whole. According to the triarchic model, psychopathy
comprises a combination of three main traits: boldness, meanness, and
disinhibition (Patrick, Fowles, & Krueger,
2009). Boldness involves the capacity to remain calm in threatening
situations, and is associated with being socially self-assured and assertive.
Disinhibition refers to problems with impulse control and a tendency to act
without thinking about the consequences. Meanness involves aggressively seeking
to have one’s own way, and is associated with callousness, and lack of remorse
or empathy. Individuals can express each of these traits to varying degrees,
and so there may be different subtypes of psychopathy emphasising particular
combinations of these traits. For example, some people described as
psychopathic might show extreme meanness but not be especially disinhibited,
and vice versa.

Although psychopathy is generally considered maladaptive,
there has been some speculation that there might be subtypes of psychopathy
that might allow a person to be successful in society. It has even been
suggested that some psychopathic traits might even have socially desirable
consequences in some circumstances. For example, according to one theory, one
of the developmental precursors of psychopathy is a fearless temperament.
Children with a fearless temperament are difficult to socialise effectively
because they do not respond well to punishment, hence they may have little
concern with the negative consequences of disregarding society’s rules.
However, people with a fearless temperament may also be very brave in the face
of danger, and given the right circumstances, might be more ready than others
to perform heroic acts involving personal risk for the benefit of others.
Hence, some have speculated that “psychopaths and heroes are twigs from the
same branch” (Smith, Lilienfeld, Coffey, &
Dabbs, 2013). Fearlessness is thought to underlie both boldness and
meanness, and it has been argued that boldness is a relatively pure form of
fearlessness, whereas meanness may result from a failure of proper
socialization in fearless children (Patrick, et
al., 2009).

Fictional hero James Bond serves his country loyally, yet has the markings of a classic psychopath

A 2013 study examined whether psychopathic traits were related to a propensity to perform heroic acts, defined as altruistic behavior that involves some degree of risk to the actor (Smith, et al., 2013). In particular, the researchers wanted to test whether a trait referred to as ‘fearless dominance’,
which they argue represents a form of ‘successful psychopathy’ and
which is closely related to boldness, would be more closely related to heroic
behavior than other psychopathic traits related to disinhibition and meanness.
In a series of three surveys,[1]
the authors correlated a number of measures of psychopathic and antisocial
traits with measures assessing the extent to which a person had performed
actions involving risk (either physical or social) to help another person, and
how often they had helped strangers (which the authors argued usually involves
risk). The results were somewhat inconsistent, but overall they found that
traits related to fearless dominance and boldness, such as social potency
(self-assurance in dealing with other people) and fearlessness had modest
positive correlations with heroic actions. Disinhibition-related traits showed
mixed results, with some traits such as ‘impulsive non-conformity’ showing
modest positive correlations, and other traits such as ‘carefree
nonplanfulness’ showing modest negative correlations with heroic actions.
Traits related to meanness, such as ‘coldheartedness’, showed small to moderate
negative correlations with heroism. Perhaps surprisingly, measures of
antisocial behavior and delinquency generally showed moderate positive
correlations with heroism measures, and some of these correlations were among
the largest in all three surveys.

The authors concluded that their study provided some
preliminary support for a connection between psychopathic-related traits,
particularly those related to boldness, and heroism. These findings seem rather
puzzling, especially the relationship between antisocial behavior and heroism.
One possible explanation is that people with bold fearless traits are prone to
involve themselves in potentially dangerous situations, which might involve
antisocial behavior on some occasions, and altruistic behavior on others.
However, other research (Miller & Lynam,
2012) has found that the trait of fearless dominance measured by Smith
et al. is only weakly related to antisocial behavior. Hence, it seems unlikely that fearless dominance is the underlying shared factor explaining the
correlations between antisocial behavior and heroism. Disinhibition traits are
more strongly related to antisocial behavior, but in the Smith et al. study
these had very inconsistent and rather weak correlations with heroism. Some
disinhibition traits, such as a tendency to act impulsively in emergency
situations, might be particularly relevant to heroism. However, other
disinhibition traits, such as having an erratic lifestyle in which one does not
plan for the future may be decidedly unheroic. Note that Smith et al. found
that ‘impulsive non-conformity’ had a positive correlation, while ‘carefree
nonplanfulness’ had a negative correlation with heroism. However, even the
correlations between impulsive non-conformity tended to be noticeably smaller
than the correlations between antisocial behavior and heroism.

What sort of antisocial behavior exactly is most correlated
with heroic behavior is not specified by the Smith et al. study and this might
be important. Aggressive antisocial behavior in general can be either proactive
(e.g. premeditated actions that harm others for personal gain) or reactive
(e.g. retaliation in response to provocation). Prior research has found that
proactive aggression is more strongly related to meanness (e.g. callous
unemotional traits) than is reactive aggression. People who engage in heroic
behavior to help others might be more likely to have a history of reactive
rather than proactive aggression, since they do not seem to be particularly
mean.

Another possible issue is that measures used in the Smith et
al. study assessed lifetime occurrences of both antisocial and heroic behavior.
It is possible that people who perform heroic actions might go through a
developmental phase involving some antisocial behavior which they later mature
out of. Hence, they might be of a different type than people who persist in
antisocial activities throughout much of their adult lives. The latter pattern
of chronic antisocial behavior seems more characteristic of the prototypical
psychopath who does not seem to learn from his or her mistakes. The reason I
suggest this is because of a recent study which seems to suggest that people
who had received an award for exceptional bravery, risking their own lives to
save others, seemed to have achieved a more mature level of personal
development compared to ordinary community members (Dunlop & Walker, 2013). In this study, participants were
assessed on interpersonal traits and personal strivings. Additionally, they
were interviewed about their life story and were asked to describe critical
incidents occurring at particular phases of their lives. Their responses were
then analysed for the presence of key themes. Compared to a community control group, bravery award recipients were higher in
interpersonal dominance, showed greater strivings for personal growth and
identity development, and had a more sophisticated level of social awareness
and understanding. Additionally, their life story interviews were characterised
by more frequent themes of agency, redemption, and early advantage. Agency
refers to a sense of personal effectiveness. Redemption themes involve life
stories in which an initially bad event or circumstance leads to something
demonstrably good or emotionally positive. Early advantage refers to quality of
attachments, childhood sensitivity to the needs of others, and the frequency of
helpers relative to enemies.

What this personality profile suggests to me is that brave
heroes in this study were interpersonally bold, felt effective in their lives,
and probably felt emotionally secure during their upbringing. Additionally,
they appear to have experienced instances of personal adversity which later led
to positive changes in their lives. They seem to have a capacity to reflect on
and learn from their life experiences, even adverse ones. Unfortunately, the
study did not assess to what extent they had ever engaged in antisocial
behavior. I am inclined to speculate that linkages between antisocial behavior
and heroic actions might particularly be found in these types of mature
individuals who are interpersonally bold and who have developed a positive life
story characterised by themes of agency and redemption. Hence, they might have
been involved in antisocial behavior at an early stage in their life, learned
from their mistakes, and then moved on to more mature socially responsible forms
of bravery. Future research studies could investigate how accurate these
speculations are through more detailed assessments of the life history of
people who have engaged in heroic behavior compared to less brave individuals.

In summary, there may well be a loose connection between
heroes and psychopaths in that they may share some tendencies but not others.
In order to be a hero, it probably helps to be fearless and perhaps even a
little reckless and impulsive. Perhaps a history of getting into trouble
contributes in some way to the development of heroism in the right people.
However, unlike hard-core psychopaths, people who become heroes are not as
mean, callous or cold. Additionally, it is possible that people who become
heroes may have a more mature level of personality development that allows them
to contribute positively to society, something that hard-core psychopaths
appear to be lacking.

Footnote

[1] Their paper also includes an analysis of personality traits of American Presidents but to keep things simpler I will not consider that here.

Monday, January 19, 2015

Psychedelic drugs, such as psilocybin have been of interest to psychologists due to their ability to induce altered states of intense well-being and profound personal significance. A recent study asked people, some who were psilocybin users and others who were not, about the best, most wonderful experiences of their lives. Some users said that the most wonderful experience occurred under the influence of psilocybin. Other users, who had their most wonderful experience while not under the drug’s influence, nevertheless reported a profound alteration of consciousness that was similar in some ways to the effects of psilocybin. For example, they described unusual visual hallucinations in addition to transcendental mystical states. Both groups of users said their most wonderful experience involved a more profoundly altered state of consciousness compared to the experiences of non-users. One possible implication of this study is that psilocybin could have lasting effects on a person’s ability to enter altered states of consciousness without drugs. However, further research is needed to confirm if this is actually the case.

Psychologists have long been interested in understanding the human capacity for intense well-being. Abraham Maslow, a pioneer of humanistic psychology, in particular coined the term “peak experiences” to refer to states in which a person feels intensely positive emotions such as great ecstasy, wonder and awe (Klavetter & Mogar, 1967). He considered peak experiences to be a sign of psychological health and thought that such experiences were particularly common in people who were fulfilling their deepest human potentials. Maslow conceptualised peak experiences as a perception of “Being” or “ultimate reality” in a mystical sense, although other researchers have used the term more broadly to refer to the most wonderful or best experiences in a person’s life.

Pioneering studies in the 1960’s investigated the potential of psychedelic drugs such as LSD to induce peak experiences. For example, one study on LSD-assisted psychotherapy found that under the influence of LSD some people had experiences involving feelings of intense beauty, a sense of deeper perception of reality, and of self-transcendence (Klavetter & Mogar, 1967). Furthermore, those who had such experiences believed that they had gained lasting benefits, including greater insight into themselves and their relationships, and that they had become clearer about their values in life. On the other hand, some of the participants in the study did not have a peak experience and reported that they found the experience disappointing and confusing, or felt that they had temporarily gone mad. Hence, some people seem more likely to benefit from psychedelic drugs than others. For example, people who are highly open to new experiences seem to benefit most, while people who are emotionally unstable or rigidly conventional in their views are prone to greater anxiety and negative, disturbing experiences (Studerus, Kometer, Hasler, & Vollenweider, 2011).

Research on psychedelic drugs was unfortunately suppressed in the 1970’s and has been resumed only in more recent years, and today uses somewhat more rigorous scientific methods. One well-known study, which I have discussed elsewhere, also found that psilocybin, the active component of magic mushrooms, can induce profoundly positive experiences in certain people (Griffiths, Richards, McCann, & Jesse, 2006). In this study mentally stable adults volunteered to take psilocybin under supportive conditions. About two-thirds of participants had a “complete mystical experience” involving feelings of intense joy, timelessness, a sense of oneness with the universe and ego-transcendence, and feelings of profound insight into reality. In a fourteen month follow-up, nearly all of the participants who had a mystical experience said they regarded it as one of the most personally significant moments of their lives.

The effects of psychedelic drugs are sensitive to features of the setting they are taken in. In the Griffiths et al. study psilocybin was administered in a safe comfortable setting with an assistant present to provide emotional support as needed to the volunteers. This helped to maximise the chance that they had a positive outcome. However, recreational users of psilocybin may be more casual about the kind of setting they create so the outcomes could be more variable. A recent study attempted to understand the outcomes of psilocybin use in more naturalistic recreational settings (Cummins & Lyke, 2013). In particular, the authors wanted to know how common peak experiences are among users and how they might compare to peak experiences reported by non-users. They gave a survey to 34 psilocybin users and 67 non-users, asking them to recall a peak experience, defined as the best experience or group of experiences in their lives. They then completed a questionnaire assessing the degree to which their peak experience involved alterations in their state of consciousness. Altered states of consciousness were assessed along three dimensions: oceanic boundlessness, which involves subjectively positive, mystical or transcendental experiences; visionary restructuralization, involving visual hallucinations and synaesthesia (crossover of sensory experiences, e.g. seeing music); and dread of ego dissolution, which includes negative experiences such as anxiety about one’s mental processes. Additionally, participants were asked if the peak experience had been induced by psilocybin and if they were under the influence of any other drugs at the time.

Among psilocybin users, 47% reported that their peak experience had occurred under the influence of psilocybin, while the other users said that it had not. Consistent with previous research, those who reported that their peak experience occurred under psilocybin said that it involved very high levels of oceanic boundlessness and visionary restructuralization, as well as relatively high levels of dread of ego dissolution. This is comparable to the findings of the study by Griffiths et al. in which about a third of participants experienced a high level of anxiety at some stage even though they rated their overall experience as being highly positive. Perhaps more interesting was that psilocybin users whose peak experience had not been induced by psilocybin also reported that their peak experience involved high levels of oceanic boundlessness (their questionnaire scores being nearly as high as those who had their peak experience under psilocybin), as well as moderately high levels of visionary restructuralization (although somewhat lower than the other psilocybin users) but very low levels of dread of ego dissolution. For both groups of psilocybin users, their peak experiences involved considerably higher levels of oceanic boundlessness and visionary restructuralization compared to the peak experiences of those who had never used psilocybin. This indicates that lifetime peak experiences of psilocybin users involved more profound alterations of consciousness, whether they had or had not been induced by psilocybin, compared to the lifetime peak experiences of people who had never used.

These results raise some fascinating questions that the study design was not able to answer. For example, it is unknown why some psilocybin users had the most wonderful experience of their lives under psilocybin while other users did not. Situational factors, such as the setting in which the drug was taken might have played a role, plus characteristic of the users themselves might also be a factor. For example, differences in the personality trait of absorption, one’s propensity to experience episode of “total attention”, are strongly linked to how profoundly a person responds to psilocybin (Studerus, Gamma, Kometer, & Vollenweider, 2012), so it is possible that the two groups of users might have differed on this trait. However, what I find even more intriguing is the fact that psilocybin users who had peak experiences without drugs nevertheless reported that these peak experiences involved intense alterations of consciousness that included visual hallucinations as well as mystical states. It would be interesting to know whether these peak experiences were spontaneous or deliberately sought. For example, there are specific practices designed to produce altered states without drugs, such as shamanic rituals, which can induce visionary experiences.

It is also possible that people who have non-drug peak experiences involving visual phenomena might have distinctive personality traits compared to those who are not prone to such experiences. One study found that people who reported having peak experiences tend to have particular traits such as being more imaginative, less authoritarian and dogmatic, more tender-minded and more experimenting than people who had not reported such experiences (Mathes, 1982). People high in fantasy proneness have a natural tendency to have very vivid imaginative experiences, and it is possible that such people are more inclined to use psilocybin. Hence, the unusual results found by Cummins and Lyke might reflect the pre-existing characteristics of people who use psilocybin.

However, another intriguing possibility is that psilocybin use itself might result in long-term changes in a person’s propensity to experience unusual visual phenomena. In a web-based survey, over 60% of people who had used psychedelic drugs reported that they had had unusual visual experiences while not under the influence of any drug (Baggott, Coyle, Erowid, Erowid, & Robertson, 2011). Furthermore, 23.9% said that such experiences occurred constantly or nearly constantly. Most people said that they were not bothered by them, although 4.2% said such experiences were sufficiently troublesome to warrant seeking treatment. These experiences came in a wide variety of types, including seeing halos or auras around things, things appearing to move or breathe, moving objects leaving after-images, seeing things with eyes open that are not really there, and more. The number of different visual phenomena a person experienced was proportional to the number of times they had taken psychedelic drugs, particularly LSD and psilocybin, although ketamine and salvia were also indicated. The reasons for these findings are not really known, although it could well be the case that taking psychedelic drugs such as psilocybin might increase a person’s propensity to experience hallucinatory visual phenomena in the long-term. If this is true, then it might explain why psilocybin users who had a peak experience that was not induced by drugs reported unusual visual experiences.

In a previous article I speculated about the possibility that psilocybin use could alter the sensitivity of neuroreceptors that underlie individual differences in the trait of absorption, a trait associated with having altered states of consciousness. A related possibility is that psilocybin and similar drugs might also alter the long-term sensitivity of neuroreceptors that underlie the experience of hallucinatory visual phenomena, which might explain why some users experience persistent unusual visual experiences. There is an additional and related possibility that psilocybin use increases a person’s tendency to have mystical peak experiences even when not using drugs. These are very speculative ideas and longitudinal research studies in which people are tracked for some time before and after initiating usage would be needed to determine if psilocybin does have long-term effects on a person’s consciousness. Further research on psychedelic drugs could help provide a deeper understanding of the nature of experiences associated with profound levels of well-being.

Monday, November 3, 2014

Many studies have linked adolescent cannabis use and risk of becoming psychotic later in
life. However, the question of whether cannabis use actually causes some people
to become psychotic is a difficult one to answer and the evidence remains
inconclusive. Although it is possible that cannabis use could be a direct cause
of mental illness, it is also possible that both usage and mental illness are
caused by an underlying third factor. In support of this latter theory, a
recently published study comparing family history of mental illness in people
with schizophrenia who either have or have not used cannabis, suggests that
heavy cannabis use and risk of mental illness are both related to an underlying
genetic predisposition. Furthermore, long-term studies on cannabis use have
generally not considered that personality characteristics that have been linked
to mental illness might also prompt a person’s decision to use drugs such as
cannabis.

Cannabis, commonly known as marijuana and also by many other
names, is one of the most popular recreational drugs in the world. Although
many people try it without apparent ill effects, a large amount of evidence
exists that individuals who engage in heavy cannabis use before the age of 18
have an increased risk of developing a psychotic mental disorder later in life (McLaren, Silins, Hutchinson, Mattick, & Hall,
2010). Testing whether or not cannabis use actually causes people to
become psychotic is difficult to do, because the only truly conclusive way to
do so would involve experimenting on a bunch of people and randomly assigning them to either be users or non-users for a long period of time,
and assessing their mental health status before and after. Due to ethical
constraints this is not possible (especially in the current climate of
political correctness) so researchers have had to make do with alternative
study methods. The strongest evidence for a causal role of cannabis comes from
prospective cohort studies in which very large groups of people are initially
assessed in regards to their mental health and drug use, preferably in
adolescence, and then reassessed over a period of years. A review of 10 studies
involving seven cohorts in six different countries showed that all but one of
these studies found that there was an association between cannabis use and
later risk of psychosis (McLaren, et al., 2010).
For example, the first such study, and one the largest, assessed over 45,000
Swedish male conscripts aged 18 and then tracked how many were admitted to
hospital for schizophrenia over the next 15 years. This study found that those
who had used cannabis between 10 and 50 times before the age of 18 were three
times more likely to be hospitalised for schizophrenia compared to non-users,
while those who had used more than 50 times before age 18 had a six-fold risk
compared to non-users. Several other cohort studies also found that heavier
usage was associated with increased risk. To put this in perspective,
schizophrenia occurs in less than 1% of the general population (van Os & Kapur, 2009), so even if with
increased risk associated with heavy use, only a small minority of cannabis
users would be affected.

While these prospective studies are consistent with the idea
of cannabis causing later psychosis, insofar as usage preceded the development
of symptoms and heavier usage was associated with higher risk, alternative
explanations for the relationship between cannabis usage and psychosis cannot
be ruled out. It is also possible that people who are at greater risk of
becoming mentally ill are also more inclined towards cannabis usage, or that
there is some third factor underlying both. For example, a limitation of the
Swedish cohort study was that it did not assess whether participants who became
mentally ill had also used other drugs after the age of 18, such as
amphetamines, that might lead to psychotic symptoms (McLaren, Silins, Hutchinson, Mattick, & Hall, 2010).
Furthermore, cohort studies mostly have not considered genetic factors or
personality traits that are associated with heavy use of cannabis and with risk
of psychotic disorder.[1]
People who choose to engage in heavy cannabis usage might do so because they
have characteristics that also predispose them to eventually become psychotic.

Artistic view of how the world feels like with schizophrenia

The authors of a recent study have argued that that the
genetic/familial risk of schizophrenia is what accounts for the association
between cannabis use and schizophrenia (Proal,
Fleming, Galvez-Buccollini, & DeLisi, 2014). That is, cannabis use
is probably not the cause of schizophrenia but itself a manifestation of the
underlying genetic factors that also case schizophrenia. This study compared
people diagnosed with schizophrenia, who either did or did not have a history
of heavy cannabis use in adolescence prior to the onset of their illness, with
two comparison groups of people who did not have schizophrenia and who either
did or did not have a history of heavy cannabis use in adolescence.[2]
They then determined how many people in each group had first degree relatives
who had been diagnosed with a psychiatric illness. This was done in order to
assess the genetic/familial risk of schizophrenia for members of each group. If
cannabis has a special causative effect in the development of psychosis that
goes beyond pre-existing genetic risk, then cannabis users who had become
psychotic would be expected to have a lower genetic risk compared to non-users
who had become psychotic. What the authors found was that, compared to the two
comparison groups, people with schizophrenia had the same elevated level of
familial/genetic risk regardless of whether they had or had not used cannabis.
Hence, they argued that it is the genetic risk that is most likely the cause of
schizophrenia, and that cannabis use is unlikely to be the cause, although they
admitted that it might hasten the onset of symptoms. Additionally, relatives of
the two cannabis-using groups, had high rates of drug use in general, which is
in line with research indicating that some people have a genetic predisposition
to use drugs.

As well as family history of mental illness, certain
psychological characteristics are associated with an increased risk of
developing psychotic symptoms. Specifically, some people who are not clinically
disturbed have certain tendencies that resemble mild psychotic symptoms, such
as experiencing unusual perceptions (e.g. feeling that strangers can read you
mind) and holding peculiar beliefs about the nature of reality (e.g. that
aliens are influencing events on earth). Psychologists refer to these
tendencies as schizotypy,
because of their resemblance to more extreme symptoms observed in people with
schizophrenia. People with high levels of schizotypy have an elevated risk of
becoming fully psychotic later in life, although it is important to note that
this only occurs in a minority of people with these tendencies[3]
(Chapman, Chapman, Kwapil, Eckblad, &
Zinser, 1994). Many research studies have found that heavy users of
cannabis also tend to be high in schizotypy traits compared to non-users (Fridberg, Vollmer, O'Donnell, & Skosnik, 2011).
Additionally, older users tend to have more severe schizotypy traits compared
to younger users, suggesting that symptoms might increase over time in users.
Once again, it is difficult to say whether having schizotypy traits predisposes
people to use cannabis, or whether using cannabis increases schizotypy. It is
also possible there could be a two-way relationship. However, there is some
evidence that schizotypy traits in heavy users tend to emerge before they first
start using. One survey of users tested this by asking participants who
indicated that they had schizotypy symptoms to estimate when they first noticed
them occurring, and to state when they first began to use cannabis (Schiffman, Nakamura, Earleywine, & LaBrie, 2005).
In the majority of cases, participants said that they had first noticed having
schizotypy symptoms a few years before ever using cannabis. Of course this does
not necessarily mean that schizotypy causes people to use cannabis, but it may
well be a factor. More to the point, it is possible that heavy cannabis users
may have an increased risk of psychosis because they naturally tend to be
higher in schizotypy traits, rather than because of their drug use. However, it
is also possible that the two act in combination and may be mutually
reinforcing.

Schizotypy also tends to be associated with other personality
traits that may be relevant to mental health, such as high neuroticism, and low
conscientiousness and agreeableness. Neuroticism has been identified as an
independent risk factor for schizophrenia in prospective studies (van Os & Jones, 2001) and for mental
disorders in general (Malouff, Thorsteinsson,
& Schutte, 2005). Although heavy cannabis users tend to be higher in
schizotypy than non-users, they do not tend to be higher on neuroticism, although
they do tend to be lower than non-users in conscientiousness and agreeableness,
as well as higher in openness
to experience (Fridberg, et al., 2011).
The majority of users, even heavy users, do not go on to develop psychotic
mental disorders, so perhaps there is a particular subset of users who are most
at risk. Fridberg et al. suggested that those who are not only high in
schizotypy but also high in neuroticism and openness to experience as well as
low in conscientiousness and agreeableness might be particularly vulnerable.
People who have a family history of mental illness would also be of particular
concern.

To reiterate, determining the nature of the causal
connection between cannabis use and psychosis is very difficult. It is possible
that cannabis use during adolescence has a direct causal role, perhaps due to
the drug’s influence on the developing brain. However, the reasons that a
person chooses to take up cannabis use in the first place may reflect
pre-existing risk factors for psychosis, such as such as genetic/familial risk
and schizotypy traits. Future research studies should take these factors into
account in order to better help identify individuals who may be at the greatest
risk of harm.

Footnotes

[1] One cohort study using a genetic test found that in heavy users with a specific genetic polymorphism had an increased risk of psychosis compared to heavy users without it (Caspi et al.). However, a later study failed to confirm this result (McLaren, et al., 2010a).

[2] The authors were careful to include only people who had not used any other illicit drugs.

[3] In fact, some people with schizotypal tendencies are otherwise well-adjusted. Schizotypy is often associated with creativity and professional artists and stand-up comedians tend to be high in these traits.

Wednesday, July 23, 2014

In part 1 of this post, I discussed
the situationist analysis of the “banality” of evil and of heroism
respectively. To recap, according to Phil Zimbardo and colleagues, both heroic
acts and evil acts occur primarily in response to situational factors, rather
than internal features of the person. However, on closer inspection, the
situationist analysis provides inconsistent accounts of how each of these
occurs. Evil actions are attributed to factors entirely outside the person,
while heroism relies on the person’s inner qualities. In this post, I explore
these inconsistencies in more detail and consider some relevant evidence.

The false dichotomy of dispositions vs.
situations

In developing his situationist
explanation of why “good” people do evil things, Zimbardo draws heavily on
his analysis of the Stanford
Prison Experiment (SPE), in which students
recruited to act as guards in a mock prison engaged in abuse and mistreatment
of students recruited to act as prisoners. Zimbardo has drawn many parallels
between the SPE and the prisoner abuse that occurred at Abu Ghraib. In both
cases, Zimbardo has argued that the horrendous behavior of those involved can
be explained pretty much entirely as a result of external factors and that “dispositional”
factors internal to the person are irrelevant. He states:

When
you put that set of horrendous work conditions and external factors together,
it creates an evil barrel. You could put
virtually anybody in it and you’re going to get this kind of evil behavior.
The Pentagon and the military say that the Abu Ghraib scandal is the result of
a few bad apples in an otherwise good barrel. That’s a dispositional analysis.
The social psychologist in me, and the consensus among many of my colleagues in
experimental social psychology, says that’s the wrong analysis. It’s not the
bad apples, it’s the bad barrels that corrupt good people. Understanding the
abuses at this Iraqi prison starts with an analysis of both the situational and
systematic forces operating on those soldiers working the night shift in that
‘little shop of horrors.’ (Emphasis
added)

Was this woman just a victim of circumstance? Does the situation absolve her of responsibility?

As
can be seen from the foregoing, situationists explicitly reject what they call
“dispositionalist” explanations that invoke personality traits to explain why
people behaved the way they did in such situations. Supposedly, those who are
inclined to a dispositional analysis want to pin all the blame on the “bad
apples” involved, while ignoring the importance of the all-powerful “bad
barrel” that is the real cause of all the horrendous things that were done
there. As I noted previously, situationists pay lip service to the notion that
behavior, including prisoner abuse is the product of the interaction between
features of the situation and features of the person. (See this article by Zimbardo for example, where he responds to criticisms of
situationism.) However, in practice he and his colleagues have expressed scorn
for the idea that it might be worthwhile to consider the relevant personality
traits of those who engaged in abusive behavior in the SPE and at Abu Ghraib.

The
importance of self-selection

Specifically,
personality psychologists have argued that self-selection played an important
role in what happened both in the SPE and at Abu Ghraib. That is, people with
certain personality traits that may predispose them to abusive behavior may be
more likely than others to volunteer to either join a prison experiment or to
work as prison guards respectively (Carnahan
& McFarland, 2007). To provide evidence for this, they conducted an
experiment to test whether people who would volunteer for a prison experiment
(“a psychological study of prison life) had different personality traits from
people who would volunteer for a non-specific psychology experiment (simply “a
psychological study”). (Neither one of the advertised “psychological
studies” actually went ahead, as the real experiment was to see who would
volunteer for each one.) Those who volunteered
for the prison experiment were found to differ significantly from the control
group on seven distinct personality traits related to aggressive tendencies.
Specifically, the prison experiment volunteers were noticeably high on measures
of aggression, authoritarianism, Machiavellianism, narcissism, and social dominance,
and also lower on altruism and dispositional empathy. Carnahan and McFarland argued
that people tend to make choices to enter situations that allow them to express
their personalities. Hence situations that lend themselves to abuse may be
particularly attractive to people who are inclined to become abusive. The
researchers were careful to point out that they were not denying the power of
these situations to influence behavior. In fact, they argued that situations
such as a prison where abuse is condoned act to reinforce and amplify
pre-existing tendencies to be abusive (McFarland
& Carnahan, 2009).

Do
personal choices matter at all?

In
their response to this study, Haney and Zimbardo (2009) attacked the authors for their supposed “dispositionalism”
which they argued was an attempt to draw attention away from larger systemic
factors that facilitated abuse while neatly blaming the actors involved, who
were really just decent people caught up in terrible circumstances. Haney and
Zimbardo blatantly parody the idea of self-selection, saying: “therefore,
whatever extreme behavior people engage in is the product of their free and
autonomous choice making, largely unencumbered by circumstance or context.”
They go on to argue that most choices that people make are “highly
situationally constrained” and determined less by personality than other
factors such as economics. The idea that people’s choices must be ‘unencumbered’
or they have no real choice at all, strikes me as a false dichotomy, much
like the false dichotomy between “bad apples” and a “bad barrel”. Ignoring the
role of systemic factors at Abu Ghraib, such as policies and practices
implicitly condoning prisoner abuse, would surely be a mistake. But ignoring
the role of individual differences and the capacity for individual choice would
also be a mistake. A comprehensive understanding of the causes of things like
prisoner abuse requires attention to all the relevant variables involved.

McFarland and Carnahan
acknowledged that something like Abu Ghraib can indeed induce abusive behavior.
However, they argued that a model based on “the power of the situation” is too
limited because it overlooks the importance of self-selection and selection by
others and treats individual differences as irrelevant (2009). McFarland and Carnahan also challenge Zimbardo’s claims
that the abusers at Abu Ghraib, and people who have engaged in government
sanctioned torture in Greece and Brazil, were just “ordinary, normal” people
corrupted by situational forces. Although Zimbardo
claimed that “virtually anybody” in the situation at Abu Ghraib would act the
same way – a sweeping generalization for which little or no evidence is
provided – there is evidence that at least some of the abusers at Abu
Ghraib volunteered for duty and that they had predispositions to abusive
behaviour. A psychiatrist who investigated Abu Ghraib concluded that both
situational and dispositional factors played a role on the abuse, and cited
“psychological factors of negativity, hatred, and desire to dominate and
humiliate” (McFarland
& Carnahan, 2009).

Who has
what it takes to do evil?

McFarland and Carnahan
also point out that although Zimbardo and colleagues have claimed that
torturers in Greece and Brazil were just ordinary people, research on this
topic has found that those who were recruited for this role were carefully
screened and selected for personal characteristics such as sympathetic
attitudes to the reigning military regime and for conformity and
conventionalism. Those who passed the screening then freely selected to go
through intensive training. They were further screened for blind obedience to
authority and for their ability to endure beatings. They were hardly ‘ordinary’
in the sense of being fairly representative of men of their age. McFarland and
Carnahan point out that these sort of attitudes are consistent with an authoritarian
personality profile. If it were true, as Zimbardo claims, that “virtually
anyone” could be made to do evil things under the right circumstances, why
would those responsible for recruiting torturers go to so much trouble to
select suitable candidates?

Double
standards for doing good and evil

What
I also find disturbing about claims about the power of the situation to
overrule individual choices is that it seems to locate all moral responsibility
for evil behavior outside the persons involved, as if the participants in this
drama were utterly powerless to act any differently. Indeed, Haney and Zimbardo
seem to imply that unless people are “unencumbered by circumstance or
context” their personal ability to make choices has little or no relevance to how
they behave. Yet when it comes to heroic choices, the
picture presented is almost the complete opposite of this. Heroes turn out to
be those who have cultivated a “heroic imagination” and who have had the
courage to make difficult decisions in situations where they were under
considerable pressure to turn a blind eye to wrong-doings in their environment.

Just how
“banal” is heroism really?

Consider an
example of the “banality of heroism” that occurred at Abu Ghraib, described in
an article on Zimbardo’s website. (Scroll
down to the last page of the document, and see the sidebar story, “The Prison
Guard’s Dilemma” by Jason Marsh.) This describes the story of Sergeant Joseph
Darby, a prison guard at Abu Ghraib who became aware of prisoner abuse and made
a brave decision to report it instead of turning a blind eye. According to the
article, Darby decided to act in spite of the culture of the prison which
“persuaded everyone else to perform or accept prisoner abuse.” He did this
because he believed it was his moral duty, even though it meant that for a
month and a half he “lived in a state of perpetual fear” of retaliation by the
other guards if they found out what he had done. Since then he has been hailed
as a hero, yet vilified by others, and now lives in hiding after going into
protective custody.

Here we have
a case of a man who performed a very brave action that put his own safety at
risk because he believed that it was the morally right thing to do. Yet this is
described as “banal” because apparently he was just an “ordinary” man. (As
opposed to what, a superman?) To my mind, the “banal” (i.e. common, ordinary)
response in this situation would be to go along with the crowd and cave in to
pressure to do nothing. Furthermore, far from being “unencumbered by
circumstance or context,” he was under considerable
situational constraint, yet still managed to resist the power of the “bad
barrel” that corrupted many others who did not show his courage. It is far from
clear to me how this example can be explained in terms of purely situational
factors that pushed the man in question into acting heroically.

Another case
of heroism cited by Franco
and Zimbardo illustrates the ability of individuals to make conscious choices
to resist situational forces in order to uphold moral values. Chiune Sugihara,
a Japanese consul official in Lithuania in 1940, assisted more than 2,000 Jews
to escape the Nazi invasion, in spite of direct orders by his government not to
do so. Franco and Zimbardo point out that not only was this a difficult
decision for him, but it was one that he thought about carefully over a long
period of time. Discussing Sugihara’s personal history, they point out that:

These
incidents suggest that Sugihara already possessed the internal strength and
self-assurance necessary to be guided by his own moral compass in uncertain
situations. We can speculate that Sugihara was more willing to assert his
individual view than others around him who preferred to “go along to get
along.”

Franco and
Zimbardo therefore acknowledge that internal features of the person such as “internal
strength and self-assurance” are needed to make moral decisions in difficult
situations. This is in direct contrast to Zimbardo’s statements implying that
heroism is a result of external circumstances and is unrelated to internal
qualities of the person.

The importance of
character

Franco and
Zimbardo acknowledge that
they do not actually know what prompts some people to take action when heroism
is called for. They even consider briefly that those who do so may be more
conscientious or they may be less risk averse. Conscientiousness and risk
aversion are personality traits, so it seems that “dispositional” explanations
are no longer completely off the table. However, they spend much more time
discussing the importance of the “heroic imagination” and ways in which it can
be nurtured so that ordinary people can learn to become heroes. They define the
heroic imagination as “the capacity to imagine facing physically or socially
risky situations, to struggle with the hypothetical problems these situations
generate, and to consider one’s actions and the consequences.” They then go on
to enumerate a number of steps a person can take to foster this. These
steps amount to developing the willingness to hold to
a code of ethical conduct and act with integrity even when under pressure
rationalise inaction or justify evil deeds. Additionally one must be able to
“transcend anticipating negative consequences associated with some forms of
heroism, such as being socially ostracized.” To my mind, these things sounds
much like what lay people would call developing “character,” the inner strength
to act with integrity and the courage of one’s convictions. In other words one
must develop the ability to resist external situational forces and follow an
internal moral compass. Ultimately, Franco and Zimbardo state that there must
be “a hero’s willingness to accept any of the consequences of heroic
action—whether the sacrifices are physical or social.”

Heroes need the strength of character to resist evil forces

Conclusion

I find much
of what Franco and Zimbardo are saying about heroism to be commendable,
particularly the concept of willingness to accept the consequences of one’s
actions. However, now I need to ask how this is compatible with the view that
when people do evil it is because they are the victim of circumstances and
forces outside of themselves? If ordinary people have the capacity to become
heroes who take a stand against injustice, then surely they are responsible for
their actions when they choose instead to do evil. If ordinary people can
develop the strength of character to resist situational forces, then does not
this imply that those who do not so resist are of weak character? Why not hold
evil-doers and heroes alike to the same moral standards of accountability for
their actions? I do not mean to imply that situational forces that act upon a
person should be disregarded. What I am arguing is for a balanced perspective
which takes into account the nature of the person who responds to these forces,
including their capacity to make responsible choices. Personality psychologist
David Funder (2006) has argued that situationist
accounts appear to condone an ideology of victimisation in which people are not
to blame for their actions because the real causes lie outside themselves. He
contrasts this with a more person-centred approach that favours being true to
oneself and the human capacity to develop a consistent self that seeks to control
one’s destiny rather than remain a pawn of situational forces. An ideology of
victimisation is also incompatible with the development of the heroic
imagination.

Free Rice

Subscribe To

About Me

Psychology graduate with boundless curiosity. I blog on Psychology Today about a range of subjects that interest me. I have a particular interest in personality and intelligence. Scientific controversies are best approached with a level head and a regard for truth over politics or ideology in my view.